North Korea fires ballistic missile toward sea, South Korea and Japan say

SEOUL - North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast on Saturday, South Korea and Japan said.

The missile was launched from the Wonsan area at around 6.30 a.m. on Saturday (2130 GMT, Friday), the South Korean military said in a statement. It did not elaborate on how far the missile flew.

Japan's coast guard, in an emailed statement citing the Japanese defense ministry, said the object may have been a ballistic missile and appeared to have come down, warning ships to take precautions.

South Korea's military said it has raised its monitoring of any further missile tests and will share intelligence with the US and Japan.

The South Korean presidential office's national security council convened an emergency meeting on Saturday to assess the situation after the missile launch, the office said in a statement.

The launch came after Pyongyang's Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, issued a statement on Friday that dismissed Seoul's demand for an apology for what it said were North Korean mines that seriously wounded South Korean soldiers in the Demilitarised Zone, a heavily fortified area between the two Koreas.

South Korea said this week that North Korean mines caused the blast that seriously injured two South Korean soldiers on a reconnaissance mission inside the 4-km-wide (2.5-mile) border that stretches across the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea has sharply ramped up hostility against the South in recent years, disavowing unification as a national goal and calling South Korea its "primary foe". —Reuters